Effective Partner Notification and the Impact of Face to Face Consultations

Background: Partner notification (PN) is a key public health activity delivered by health care workers (HCWs) and patients; however, it is difficult to evaluate effectiveness by busy providers.  We therefore developed an anonymous cloud based interactive digital contact slip (idCS) (www.sxt.org.uk/pn/about)and tested (1) PN performance and (2) the impact of face to face (F2F) versus telephone initiation of PN.

Methods: The database from 27^th January 2016 (launch date) to 23^rdApril 2016 was analysed on a spreadsheet and Fisher’s exact test used to evaluate outcomes.

Results: The idCS has been used by nine different open access providers for 443 index patients diagnosed with nine different STDs or clinical diagnoses requiring PN. The index patients were predominantly white (50%), male (75%) of whom two thirds were men who have sex with men.  These index patients declared 1257 partners, 892 (71%) were contactable, 308 (35%) partners were told, 172 (56%) opened the idCS link and 53 (17%) were seen by 20 different providers.  The median time (range) for partners to be seen was 2 days (0-48 days).   For F2F and telephone initiation of PN, the number of Chlamydia trachomatis infections were 152 and 83; total number of partners 337 and 184; contactable partners (% total) were 276 (82) and 148 (80); the partners told (% contactable) were 103 (37) and 27 (18) respectively (p<0.001).  Whilst for Neisseria gonorrhoea with F2F and telephone initiation of PN,  the number of infections were 62 and 23; total number of partners 337 and 108; contactable partners (% total) were 153 (45) and 71 (66); the partners told (% contactable) were 57 (37) and 14 (20) respectively (not significant).  

Conclusions: The idCS can support providers to deliver PN and provide real-time performance data.  F2F initiation of PN is more effective than by telephone and the reasons need to be understood.